Before I start, I'd like to say that I really like the current 3-hour 5+5 format. It's a good standard, there is enough time to play plenty of boards, and there are enough boards in the sum so that luck doesn't play a huge factor.

However - if we are going to do large online tournaments, or even a tournament with many real-life meetups around the world on the same day (this is one proposal for the World Championship), then this format doesn't quite work. The biggest reason is time zones: what might be the perfect playing time for someone in Europe may be unreasonably early in the USA and unreasonably late in China.

Here are some ideas on how to change the tournament format:1) 24-hour 5+5. Simple enough, but someone might play way more than someone else.2) Give each real-life meetup a different 3-hour slot on the same day; slots might overlap. Ideally they would be prevented from seeing each other's results. Then, at the end, all the results are added together.3) Let each person choose their own 3-hour slot on the same day; slots might overlap. Then, at the end, the results are all added together.

3h 5+5 served well in close to 20 tournaments and talking about its cns almost feels like blasphemy.

pros:
-luck doesn't play a role
-everyone has enough time to finish the required games
-open to beginners
-relaxing mode for better players (i never played more than 2.5h)
-very useful to determine who is how fast

While they are by far not as fair as the standard format, they are highly entertaining to watch. And even as a player, I miss them. Nothing in minesweeper compares to the tension that you feel when you face off against someone else that way... 10beginner legs were so much fun :/ Especially beating Christoph at them when he was still better than me Maybe having stuff like that as a side-event would be best.

I'd also like to say that I think that 24h tournaments are not suitable for a wch - casual tournaments like "fuck off 2011" are primarily about socializing on IRC, but something like that would turn the wch into a no-lifing competition, at least to a certain extent.

I have to say, even with forced guesses playoffs can be made fair by just having a large enough number of games. 1 round of 2 exp is definitely not enough, but I think that if you make it fair by doing something like BO5/2 exp, or BO3/4 exp.

And exp is the biggest problem, it gets fair enough much more quickly on int and beg. You can alleviate much of the unfairness by adding more rounds/games per round.